Robert Hampson, a Conrad scholar at the University of London, offered these comments on The Shadow-Line for The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad: 

Conrad close to the time of his own shadow-line. (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

The Shadow-Line begins with the narrator’s younger self going through a period of crisis, which is presented as characteristic of ‘that twilight region between youth and maturity’. He gives up his job as mate and moves into the Officers’ Sailors’ Home, while waiting for a ship to take him back to England. There, he is unexpectedly offered the chance of commanding a ship whose captain has died, and jumps at the opportunity as the ‘ultimate test of my profession’. The story is then constructed in terms of the young captain’s expectations and their frustration by experience. His new role, which he at first sees as the ‘magical solution of all his life-problems’, proves to involve ‘an intricate network of moral imperatives, psychological discoveries, and social responsibilities’ [according to one critic]. Instead of the ‘more intense life’ that he had expected, he finds himself ‘bound hand and foot’; instead of feeling supported by the continuity of captaincy through the ‘succession of men’ who have been his predecessors, he experiences intense ‘moral isolation’. Subsequently, in the various crises the ship faces he feels himself judged and found wanting. In the end, however, through confronting his feelings of guilt and self-doubt, he achieves his professional identity. …

The Shadow-Line recounts a rite of passage into mature identity within the male world of the Merchant Navy. This, however, is not the only border with which the story is concerned. There are also the ‘shadow-lines’ between sanity and madness, the natural and the supernatural, and life and death. Ransome, for example, is not just the epitome of fidelity to duty, but, with his bad heart, is a constant reminder of the imminence of death. Arguably, what the captain learns is what Ransome physically embodies; the performance of duty in the full consciousness of one’s own weakness, the pursuit of ‘a difficult vocation upon an ocean of incertitude’. Liminal states and moments of transition, to which the title The Shadow-Line draws attention, are a recurrent feature of Conrad’s late fiction. Death, in particular, increasingly becomes a focus of attention.

When Joseph Conrad’s first child was born in 1898, the author wrote to Stephen Crane: “A male infant arrived yesterday and made a devil of a row… It’s a ghastly nuisance.” 

Yet The Shadow-Line is dedicated to Borys, the first of his two sons. Borys was a soldier in the “Great War” who returned from the front, shell-shocked and gassed. Years later, in 1970, he published a memoir, My Father: Joseph Conrad. 

A few excerpts:

When I visited Pent Farm recently I was surprised to see how little it had changed in appearance; and the room in which my Father used to work looked astonishingly familiar. There was an oak table in the corner in the same position as I remembered his desk, and an armchair by the fire exactly as his huge wingchair had been placed. This chair, which remains in my memory as the focal point of the scenery upon the stage of our family life, invariably presented its back to the door so that, when in use, the occupant was invisible to anyone entering he room. Invisible, that is, with the exception of one foot which protruded at the side, owing to his invariable habit of sitting with his knees crossed. I believe we could all assess the mood of the head of the house by a surreptitious glance at that foot. If it was motionless it could be safely assumed that its owner was reading or thinking, and in a reasonably tranquil frame of mind, but any movement of the limb indicated all was not well. In fact, the degree of his displeasure oculd be fairly accurately gauged by the rapidity with which the foot waggled, and really violent movement was a danger signal unwise to ignore.

***

At this point it is necessary to mention that my Father had difficulty in pronouncing certain words in English, and there were those who wrote about him as having a strong foreign accent, but I consider this to be a gross overstatement. Nevertheless, it is true that, when unwell or under emotional strain his mispronunciation became more marked. We in the family were, of course, familiar with most of the words with which he had difficulty but occasionally one would crop up which was not known to all of us. This happened after our visit to the doctor and, for a short time, caused me acute distress.

Continue reading →